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Pop over to our sister site Meadowside Designs tomorrow morning where you will find the Needs List for a Mystery quilt to sew along with over the summer. By September you will have a completed quilt top if you can keep up each week.

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Can you believe it’s Monday again? The days seem to be racing by and we’re wondering where the long lazy weeks of summer have gone (were there any in the first place? – B). So on we march with Step 4 of our current Mystery -you can download a printable version of the instructions here.

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Today’s the day for Step 3 of our current Mystery Monday project – you can download a printable version of this step here.

For this step you will need fabrics A, B, D and E.

Unit 3 Half Square Triangles

The finished size of these units is 2” and you will need to make –

32 units using fabrics E and B

32 units using fabrics A and B

16 units using fabrics A and D

Here’s how to make the units:

From Fabric E cut 16 squares 2⅞”

From Fabric B cut 16 squares 2⅞”

Pair these squares RS together and stitch into half square triangle units by marking the diagonal and stitching ¼” away on both sides of the marked line. Alternatively you could mark the two stitching lines and not the cutting line.

(We confess that this is usually our preferred option even though it requires two lines to be marked, not one – we have convinced ourselves that this is a more accurate method as you can perhaps see from the photo below, the unit on the right was done with two lines)

Press flat to set the stitches before cutting apart and pressing the half square triangle units.

Trim “ears” from units .

You should have a total of 32 EB units – put 16 of these into Bag Z and the remaining 16 into Bag Y.

From Fabric A cut 16 squares 2⅞”

From Fabric B cut 16 squares 2⅞”

Pair these squares RS together and proceed as above to make a total of 32 pressed and trimmed AB units. All 32 AB units now go into Bag Y.

From Fabric A cut 8 squares 2⅞”

From Fabric D cut 8 squares 2⅞”

Pair these squares RS together and proceed as before to make a total of 16 pressed and trimmed AD units. All 16 AD units go into Bag Z.

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Maggi has just pointed out that our maths is rubbish (actually she was more polite than that!) and that we’ve made an error in the number of pieces we asked you to cut out. The bad news is that its even more. Here’s the amended list.

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This is where it starts to get just a little bit more serious and we sew fabric together as well as cut it apart. There are quite a lot of units in this week’s instructions – and you’re all probably recovering from Festival of Quilts – so this week’s instructions will be repeated next Monday as well – so you will have two whole weeks to complete these units (how generous is that? B). You can download a printable version here.

This week you will need fabrics A, B, and D.

Two sets of instructions are given – if you have plenty of fabric then speed-piece using rectangles and squares; if fabric is in short supply then cut squares and then triangles.

(You can increase the size of the following pictures by clicking on them)

Lay out one large and two small triangles in the correct arrangement.

With the large and one small triangle RS together, and with lower and diagonal edges aligned, stitch from top to bottom ¼” from the cut edge.

Press the seam in the direction of the smaller triangle.

Position the remaining small triangle RS together as shown (note lower edge aligned and “crossover” at the top) and stitch.

Press this second seam allowance towards the small triangle.

Trim “ears” and press.

You could lay out and stack all the pieces for one set of Flying Geese units and chain piece your way down the stack for the first small triangles. Snip apart, press then similarly chain piece your way down the second stack for the remaining small triangles, snip these apart, trim and press.

Flying Geese from rectangles and squares

Depending on your degree of accuracy and level of experience you can choose to either mark and stitch or just aim and stitch.

If you like the comfort of stitching on a marked line then you will need to mark the diagonal on the WS of each of the small squares.

TIP: If you detest waste of fabric you may find that it’s worth taking the extra time and marking a second diagonal ½” from the first. This means that you can stitch along both marked lines and then cut between the two lines and you have a dinky ready-pieced half square triangle unit. We leave it to you as to what to do with all of these – perhaps put them in yet another bag to await inspiration?

With RS together align a small square with the right hand, top and lower edge of a rectangle. Stitch on the marked line.

Press to set the line of stitching then trim away to leave a ¼” seam allowance.

Turn back the newly-pieced triangle(s) and press.

In the same way align the second square with the left, top and lower edges of the rectangle and stitch on the marked line. Double check the direction of the diagonal to be sure that you will end up with a Goose unit, not a parallelogram. Also notice the overlap at the top edge.

Press the stitched line flat then trim away.

Take a moment to admire the X on the WS of the unit– this will be a most useful reference point in the later stages of this Mystery.

TIP: If a (background) fabric is directional you can create a livelier final look by changing the direction whenever possible. So, for instance, in the pictures above you can see that the wavy line pattern on the background fabric is running in the same direction for both small triangles – it would look better/more interesting if the waves went down one triangle and across the other.

You’ll need Fabrics A, C and E only for this step and we recommend that you spray starch the fabrics before you begin.

From Fabric A cut 6, 4⅞inch squares.

From Fabric C cut 2, 4⅞inch squares.

From Fabric E cut 10, 4⅞inch squares.

Double check measurements and quantities against this list and then place all the squares in Bag X.

Please make sure that you have made a handy fabric reference for yourself before next week – we think it’s an essential item! Here’s a reminder of what Barbara’s looks like – very high tech –

PS. Teeny hint – if you’re going to Festival of Quilts later this week you may want to acquire some Christmas themed/coloured fabric. It will be that time of year before you know it, and perhaps just time to squeeze in a small, festive Mystery Monday project …